Jo Rhett wrote:
On Jun 12, 2007, at 6:02 PM, Martin Hannigan wrote:
You act on an issue that affects about 5
people once every 2 years and you ignore the massive overload on the
list of off topic posting?
While I mostly agree with what you are saying, it doesn't hurt to be
honest about reality here. I get between 6 and 12 "vacation" responses
for every post I write on this list. I'm sure everyone else does too.
That's not 5 people every 2 years.
Second: off-topic while dear to my heart to stop, is harder to gain
consensus on. Even harder to get consensus on what the right answer
would be.
Everyone agrees that autoresponders are bad, and the solution is very
simple. Since the situation is simpler, sometimes its easier to focus
on something like that and get it done.
Is ignoring 6-12 messages really that hard? I can't imagine that anyone
on this list really ignores less than 60 emails daily. Yes, if a machine
could know what is a waste of your time, it would save a fraction of
human time that it takes to press the next button. But if a machine
could know that, I can think of a lot better ways I'd task it.
However, a tremendous amount of time is wasted just by discussing these
sorts of "small" problems. Plenty of people contribute to nanog daily
and don't feel the need to complain about it. It seems to me, the ones
who contribute in spurts sometimes separated by months seem to have to
less to complain about.
That said, a very simple way to handle it is to separate your mail
(whether its procmail, a separate mailbox, a + rule in your name, or
what have you) to automatically catch these "horrible" autoresponders
into a box that doesn't clutter your critical mail. I think that's how
most of us do it.
I think someone suggests the above everytime a discussion comes up. In
the spirit of "a very simple solution", everyone can be their own
dictator of their own mailbox -- they don't need to protect the rest of
the list, or develop a consensus for change. Just fix it for yourself.
This is a time-honored NANOG tradition, at least when it comes to email.
Deepak Jain
AiNET
